Peanuts Forever (7 Peanuts compilations)

    

Charles Schulz. Good Ol’ Snoopy (1958), Let’s Face it, Charlie Brown (1960), This Is Your Life, Charlie Brown (1962), You’re Not For Real, Snoopy (1965), Snoopy and the Red Baron (1966), He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown (1968), You’re in Love, Charlie Brown (1969)

     Had another look at the Charlie Brown paperbacks we accumulated when our children we little. I’m still a Peanuts fan. Schulz’s talent was to see the connection between children’s frustrations and adult ones. And he was a master of graphic expression. A wiggly line for a mouth, a drooping doggy head, a dot and curved line for raised or scrunched eyebrows - it’s

amazing how much emotion is conveyed by so little ink. Schulz also knows how to pace a joke. Many of the strips have the build-up and punch line of a stand-up comic’s joke, but are impossible without the graphic. Such as Snoopy lying on his back on the roof of his doghouse while the rain pours down. There’s only one thing wrong with this...The rain keeps running down my nose and eyes.

     Some of the strips have taken on a different resonance these days: Lucy to Linus: See that building there?... If you ever want to borrow a book, all you have to do is go in there and tell them which one you want, and They’ll let you take it home. Linus: Free? Lucy: Absolutely free! Linus: Sort of makes you wonder what they’re up to.

     I thoroughly enjoyed rereading these books. I’ve decided to keep them. ****

Cartoons and Comic Strips: Larson and Trudeau

     Gary Larson. Wildlife Preserves (1989) I never tire of Gary Larson. I think this is the fifth time I’ve read this collection of his cartoons. His gift is to imagine how a different context would affect the lives of people, animals, and of course monsters. Such as the unfortunate fish whose tail is embedded in two styrofoam shoes, which drag him up to “sleep with the humans.”  Or a flea painting a dogscape, which consists of acres of fur. Or Thor’s workbench, on which rest his hammer, his screwdriver, and his crescent wrench.
     Well, maybe you have to have the same sense of seeing the logically absurd.
     Recommended. ****

     G. B. Trudeau. Check Your Egos at the Door (1984, 1985) A Doonesbury collection. These strips were drawn during the reelection of Reagan. It’s depressing to see how little has changed since then. The only real difference is that liberals and conservatives were still talking to each other, whereas now they either scream at or ignore each other. The strips rely on words, so a brief quote is impossible, but I’ll try:
     Duane: I can’t get over these figures, Rick. Suburbanites went for Reagan 65% to 35%, fundamentalist 89% to11%, car dealers 54% to 46%...
     Rick: Duane, you can’t let all that get to you....
     Sounds a lot like the Dems trying to figure out how they lost to Trump. Except that Reagan won the popular vote, and Trump didn’t. ****

Johnny Hart. B.C.: Great Zot, I’m Beautiful (1971)

     Johnny Hart. B.C.: Great Zot, I’m Beautiful (1971) A dinosaur gazing at its reflection in a stream does the Narcissus thing. That’s one sign that Hart is a literate and witty comic strip author. Most of the strips collected here rely on visual, verbal, and conceptual puns, one sometimes gets the point only on a double take. Other strips rely on bizarre logic: “How do go about sell underarm deodorant without getting too offensive?” asks Wiley. “Try keeping your elbows close to you sides,” answers Peter.  And that sample will have to do. You may find a copy of a B.C. collection in a yard sale, if you do, snap it up. ***

Berke Breathed. Bloom County Babylon (1986)

     Berke Breathed. Bloom County Babylon (1986) Ah, Bloom County: a place where all the American stereotypes live together in more or less happy harmony. If only real life were like that. This book is now 26 years old, yet almost all of it could be written today. The only clues to its age are the pop-culture references (eg, Star Trek instead of Mad Men) and the technology (the Banana computer looks like an Apple IIe). I have most of the Bloom County books, my children and grandchildren like them too, and we reread them at intervals. **** (2012)

Eric Wright. Buried in Stone (1997)

      Eric Wright. Buried in Stone (1997) Offered as the first Mel Pickett story, it’s really the second, as we first met Mel in A Fine Italian Hand, in which he helped Charlie Salter. Retired to Larch River, about three hours drive north of Toronto, Mel is nice guy, and much shrewder than his avuncular, vaguely rural externals suggest. But he can’t avoid being drawn into the case of a local thug’s murder. His legwork includes a welcome train ride to Winnipeg and drive to Kenora, where he finds proof of a crucial falsification of dates. The upshot is that Lyman Caxton, the local police chief, loses his woman, who has helped hide the thug (her brother) from the law. Pickett ends up about to marry Charlotte Mercer, the waitress/cook at the local café, with whom he has been spending pleasant Sunday afternoons in bed and at table.
     All in all, a satisfying read; the crime and its solution provide an excuse for a portrait of rural Ontario that has the ring of truth despite its somewhat sentimental point of view. The byplay between the OPP, Mel, and Caxton is nicely done: the combination of mutual respect, wariness of treading on foreign turf, and professional procedure feels right. **½ (2010)

Berke Breathed. The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos & Classics of Western Literature (1989 & 1990)

     Berke Breathed. The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos & Classics of Western Literature (1989 & 1990) Opus and his friends have given me many hours of pleasure, both the original strips that I occasionally came across in the newspapers, and these and other collections. Bloom County is a place of naivete and malice, of comfort and pain, of bloody-mindedness and co-operation. Like all great cartoon strips, it both documents and critiques the obsessions of the culture. The strip ran from 1980 to 1989. Apart from names, the politics haven’t changed much. They are merely more extreme, enough so that straight reporting of today’s US politics in the 1980s would have been read as satire.
   More here: Bloom_County ****